Beneath the Hyde

A Short Tale of Broken Chains: From Gothic London of 1729

A Dark and Gloomy Cellar

Despite the cold, the smell, and the hearty footsteps overhead—any number of men who might have been close enough to hear their cries—the boys never dared to make a sound. George was six years old, and his brother Henry was nine. They had been trapped here for seven long months, or perhaps more, in the cold and damp. Most nights, when no more light bled through the cracks in the timber-planked floor above, they huddled together in the corner of their cellar room. A meager wool blanket lay close by, though by now it was too soiled to sleep on.

There was a window in their little cellar room, or something that resembled one—a barred grate high off the floor, level with the alley outside. But no one walked by. The ill-used tavern above them, known as The Hyde, was too close to the stench of Fleet Ditch, too near the warrens of the sick, the coffin mongers, and charnel houses. Raving gin shops and corners for ladies beckoning with sickly voices surrounded them. The Hyde was so far from any decent place that even the few night watchmen who might have had a mind to protect their fellow men would only clap a kerchief to their mouths and shuffle quickly past. They would scurry away, their light poles stumping along the cobblestones—until the boys could hear them no longer.

An Unexpected Visitor

Tonight should have been no different. But from the moment their host—the horrid and unpredictable Mr. Withers—came to see them, it was clear, at least to Henry, that something was odd. Mr. Withers never came at night.

“Your lucky day, my boys,” he said, rattling the keys at the door. “I shall need you walking strong, so there will be fine cold porridge for you upstairs. There be a ship, a ship to take you off my care tomorrow, to a magical place—to America.”

“What is America?” Henry asked, certain he had heard the term in passing conversations of those with no interest in discovering what rotted beneath The Hyde.

“A far country, my dear boys,” Withers answered, his yellow eye bulging at them between the little window bars in the door. “It’s transportation for you, my boys. The captain has paid for you both. Now, there’s likely not food enough but for one on your journey, so the stout and strongest, Henry I suspect, will see those green shores. And perhaps for you, Georgie, the green shores of Heaven.”

Henry wanted none of it. “We shall stay here, sir. I think we shall.”

Mr. Withers made an unpleasant sound, sorting through keys in the dim light of his pungent lantern. “The captain is a scabby knave,” he said. “Paying scarcely a sovereign, but this is your last bread and porridge by my hand, boys. You shall go where you’re told. Now just you wait, and I’ll return with my right keys. Perhaps pray now, for what mercy you’re owed.”

Their chuckling host made his way back down the hall. For a moment, Withers thought he’d heard a sound behind him, like a slender wrenching of metal. But that was just the boys scraping their empty tin with the spoon again; ungrateful creatures they were.

The Escape

Returning minutes later, Mr. Withers rattled again at the door. But with a whine, it pushed inward, unlocked. By the draft, he knew at once the little window grate was broken, the panes hollow, open to the dark. The boys were gone.

Aghast, he raised his light with a curse. “You never climbed that! Not for so high a window!” he cried, searching the room. And there he found a man—all in black—crouching in the corner where the prisoners should have been huddled. Even the man’s face was covered, tightly shrouded like a corpse, topped with a cocked hat, as any common rogue might wear.

“Oh dear me, sir,” Mr. Withers grunted, drawing the long knife from his hip—his little Bessie, his carving knife. “You’re in a spot of trouble, friend, if you’ve come to purloin the property of Mr. Fargrave, my employer.”

“There are other children,” the crouching man said. “Where are the others?”

“Them what?” Withers grunted again. “The others? Produce coin for their purchase, and I’ll have you the address. It’s all in the ledger, of course; we keep every record. But you’ll be wasting in regret for this insult, sir, before such knowledge be of use to you.”

“You keep a ledger? Good.” The man in black slowly stood.

Mr. Withers put his fingers to his lips and blew a loud whistle, sudden and sharp. “I’ll rouse my rough lads for you, sir!” he warned. “Perhaps you’ll buy us off before the end?”

The man in black stood very still. “Whistling will not save you,” he said.

A glimmer of steel slashed, and Mr. Withers found himself gored in the throat. A chain pulled the hook free, a boot met his chest, and knocked backward through the barred door he crashed to the wet floor. His eyes found only the prone fire of the lantern as it dwindled and died.

A New Beginning

Henry and George had been slipped into a wagon outside, wrapped separately in blankets that smelled not of human stench, but of clean wool. They did not scratch. A figure was there with them, crouching in the dark as the wagon moved. She was all in black, with a cornered hat, even her eyes covered.

A damp kerchief she employed to wipe their faces and necks. Bottles of milk she put to their lips, followed by bacon and bread, mending the nauseous ache in their bellies. The coach picked up speed, rolling on what sounded like soft ground, with heavy wheels wrapped in rope or something like that. It took many bites before Henry overcame his nerves, his little frame charged with food—well enough to speak.

“Are you for the captain, to take us away, for transport-ation?” he asked.

“You’re not to be sold,” the woman said. She was young, but her voice was hard, like one who only spoke in times of danger. “We are taking you home, to meet your mother, to meet the queen.”

“The queen!” George gasped through thick chews.

“The queen in the dark, who will care for you,” the woman replied. “You are children of Saunmoor now.”

The Journey Ahead

As the wagon rolled on, the boys exchanged glances, their hearts pounding with a mix of fear and excitement. What awaited them at the end of this journey? Would they truly meet the queen? Or was this just another trick, another deception?

But the warmth of the food in their bellies and the kindness of the woman gave them hope. They were no longer just prisoners in a dank cellar; they were on the brink of something new, something extraordinary.

The darkness outside the wagon seemed to pulse with possibilities. They were children of Saunmoor now, and whatever that meant, it felt like a promise—a promise of freedom, adventure, and perhaps even a touch of magic.

As the wheels creaked and the shadows danced around them, Henry and George clung to each other, ready to embrace whatever lay ahead. They were no longer bound by broken chains; they were free.

This tale of broken chains from Gothic London of 1729 is just the beginning. Who knows what other stories await in the shadows?